The Bars of Iron Part 77

"I'm not a fool." Piers left the window with the gait of a prowling animal; he stood again face to face with the other man. But though his features were still mask-like, his eyes shone through the mask; and they were eyes of leaping flame. "Oh, I am no fool, I a.s.sure you," he said, and in his voice there sounded a deep vibration that was almost like a snarl. "I know you too well by this time to be hoodwinked. You would come between us if you could."

"You lie!" said Tudor.

He did not raise his voice or speak in haste. His vehemence had departed.

He simply made the statement as if it had been a wholly impersonal one.

Piers' hands clenched, but they remained at his sides. He looked at Tudor hard, as if he did not understand him.

After a moment Tudor spoke again. "I am no friend of yours, and I never shall be. But I am the friend of your wife, and--whether you like it or not--I shall remain so. For that reason, whatever I do will be in your interests as well as hers. I have not the smallest intention or desire to come between you. And if you use your wits you will see that I couldn't if I tried. Your marriage with her tied my hands."

"What proof have I of that?" said Piers, his voice low and fierce.

Tudor made a slight gesture of disgust. "I am dealing with facts, not proofs," he said. "You know as well as I do that though you obtained her love on false pretences, still you obtained it. Whether you will keep it or not remains to be seen, but she is not the sort of woman to solace herself with anyone else. If you lose it, it will be because you failed to guard your own property--not because anyone deprived you of it."

"d.a.m.nation!" exclaimed Piers furiously, and with the word the storm of his anger broke like a fiery torrent, sweeping all before it, "are you taking me to task, you--you--for this accursed trick of Fate? How was I to know that this infernal little sot would turn up here? Why, I don't so much as know the fellow's name! I had forgotten his very existence! Where the devil is he? Let me find him, and break every bone in his body!" He whirled round to the door, but in a moment was back again. "Tudor! d.a.m.n you! Where's the key?"

"In my pocket," said Tudor quietly. "And, Piers, before you go--since I am your ally in spite of myself--let me warn you to keep your head!

There's no sense in murdering another man. It won't improve your case.

There's no sense in running amok. Sit down for Heaven's sake, and review the situation quietly!"

The calm words took effect. Piers stopped, arrested in spite of himself by the other's steady insistence. He looked at Tudor with half-sullen respect dawning behind his ungoverned fury.

"Listen!" Tudor said. "The fellow has gone. I packed him off myself. It was a piece of sheer ill-luck that brought him home in time for this show. He starts for America _en route_ for Australia in less than a week, and it is utterly unlikely that either you or any of your friends will see or hear anything more of him. Guyes himself is by no means keen on him and only had him as best man because a friend failed him at the last minute. If you behave rationally the whole affair will probably pa.s.s off of itself. Everyone knows the fellow was intoxicated, and no one is likely to pay any lasting attention to what he said. Treat the matter as unworthy of notice, and you will very possibly hear no more of it! But if you kick up a row, you will simply court disaster. I am an older man than you are. Take my word for it,--I know what I am talking about."

Piers listened in silence. The heat had gone from his face, but his eyes still gleamed with a restless fire.

Tudor watched him keenly. Not by his own choice would he have ranged himself on Piers' side, but circ.u.mstances having placed him there he was oddly anxious to effect his deliverance. He was fighting heavy odds, and he knew it, but there was a fighting strain in his nature also. He relished the odds.

"For Heaven's sake don't be a fool and give the whole show away!" he urged. "You have no enemies. No one will want to take the matter up if you will only let it lie. No one wants to believe evil of you. Possibly no one will."

"Except yourself!" said Piers, with a smile that showed his set teeth.

"Quite so." Tudor also smiled, a grim brief smile. "But then I happen to know you better than most. You gave yourself away so far as I am concerned that night in the winter. I knew then that once upon a time in your career--you had--killed a man."

"And you didn't tell Avery!" The words shot out unexpectedly. Piers was plainly astonished.

"I'm not a woman!" said Tudor contemptuously. "That affair was between us two."

"Great Scott!" said Piers.

"At the same time," Tudor continued sternly, "if I had known what I know now, I would have told her everything sooner than let her ruin her happiness by marrying you."

Piers made a sharp gesture that pa.s.sed unexplained. He had made no attempt at self-defence; he made none then. Perhaps his pride kicked at the idea; perhaps in the face of Tudor's shrewd grip of the situation it did not seem worth while.

He held out his hand. "May I have that key?"

Tudor gave it to him. He was still watching narrowly, but Piers' face told him nothing. The mask had been replaced, and the man behind it was securely hidden from scrutiny. Tudor would have given much to have rent it aside, and have read the thoughts and intentions it covered. But he knew that he was powerless. He knew that he was deliberately barred out.

Piers went to the door and fitted the key into the lock. His actions were all grimly deliberate. The volcanic fires which Tudor had seen raging but a few seconds before had sunk very far below the surface. Whatever was happening in the torture-chamber where his soul agonized, it was certain that no human being--save possibly one--would ever witness it. What he suffered he would suffer in proud aloofness and silence. It was only the effect of that suffering that could ever be made apparent, when the soul came forth again, blackened and shrivelled from the furnace.

Yet ere he left Tudor, some impulse moved him to look back.

He met Tudor's gaze with brooding eyes which nevertheless held a faint warmth like the dim reflection of a light below the horizon.

"I am obliged to you," he said, and was gone before Tudor could speak again.

CHAPTER VII

THE GATES OF h.e.l.l

Up and down, up and down, in a fever of restlessness, Avery walked. She felt trapped. The gloomy, tapestried room seemed to close her in like a prison. The whole world seemed to have turned into a monstrous place of punishment. One thing only was needed to complete the anguish of her spirit, and that was the presence of her husband.

She could not picture the meeting with him. Body and soul recoiled from the thought. It would not be till the morning; that was her sole comfort.

By the morning this fiery suffering would have somewhat abated. She would be calmer, more able to face him and hear his defence--if defence there could be. Somehow she never questioned the truth of the story. She knew that Tudor had not questioned it either. She knew moreover that had it been untrue, Piers would have been with her long ago in vehement indignation and wrath.

No, the thing was true. He was the man who had wrecked her life at its beginning, and now--now he had wrecked it again. He was the man whose hands were stained with her husband's blood. He had done the deed in one of those wild tempests of anger with which she was so familiar. He had done the deed, possibly unintentionally, but certainly with murderous impulse; and then deliberately cynically, he had covered it up, and gone his arrogant way.

He had met her, he had desired her; with a few, quickly-stifled qualms he had won her, trusting to luck that his sin would never find him out.

And so he had made her his own, his property, his prisoner, the slave of his pleasure. She was bound for ever to her husband's murderer.

Again body and soul shrank in quivering horror from the thought, and a wild revolt awoke within her. She could not bear it. She must break free.

The bare memory of his pa.s.sion sickened her. For the first time in her life hatred, fiery, intense, kindled within her. The thought of his touch filled her with a loathing unutterable. He had become horrible to her, a thing unclean, abominable, whose very proximity was pollution. She felt as if the blood on his hands had stained her also--the blood of the man she had once loved. For a s.p.a.ce she became like a woman demented. The thing was too abhorrent to be endured.

And then by slow degrees her brain began to clear again. She grew a little calmer. Monstrous though he was, he was still human. He was, in a fas.h.i.+on, at her mercy. He had sinned, but it was in her hands that his punishment lay.

She was stronger than he. She had always known it. But she must keep her strength. She must not waste it in futile resentment. She would need it all. He had entered her kingdom by subtlety; but she would drive him forth in the strength of a righteous indignation. To suffer him to remain was unthinkable. It would be to share his guilt.

Her thoughts tried to wander into the future, but she called them resolutely back. The future would provide for itself. Her immediate duty was all she now needed to face. When that dreaded interview was over, when she had shut him out finally and completely then it would be time enough to consider that. Probably some arrangement would have to be made by which they would meet occasionally, but as husband and wife--never, never more.

It was growing late. The dinner-gong had sounded, but she would not go down. She rang for Victor, and told him to bring her something on a tray.

It did not matter what.

He looked at her with keen little eyes of solicitude, and swiftly obeyed her desire. He then asked her if the dinner were to be kept for _Monsieur Pierre_, who had not yet returned. She did not know what to say, but lest he should wonder at her ignorance of Piers' doings, she answered in the negative, and Victor withdrew.

Then, again lest comment should be made, she forced herself to eat and drink, though the food nauseated her. A feeling of sick suspense was growing upon her, a strange, foreboding fear that hung leaden about her heart. What was Piers doing all this time? What effect had that message, delivered by Tudor, had upon him? Why had he not returned?

Time pa.s.sed. The evening waned and became night. A full moon rose red and wonderful out of a bank of inky cloud, lighting the darkness with an oddly tropical effect. The night was tropical, breathless, terribly still. It seemed as if a storm must be upon its way.

She began to undress at last there in the moonlight. The heat was too intense to veil the windows, and she would not light the candles lest bats or moths should be attracted. At another time the eerieness of the shadowy room would have played upon her nerves, but to-night she was not even aware of it. The shadows within were too dark, too sinister.

A great weariness had come upon her. She ached for rest. Her body felt leaden, and her brain like a burnt-out furnace. The very capacity for thought seemed to have left her. Only the horror of the day loomed gigantic whichever way she turned, blotting out all beside. Prayer was an impossibility to her. She felt lost in a wilderness of doubt, forsaken and wandering, and terribly alone.

If she could rest, if she could sleep, she thought that strength might return to her--the strength to grapple with and overthrow the evil that had entered into and tainted her whole life. But till sleep should come to her, she was impotent. She was heavy and numb with fatigue.

She lay down at length with a vague sense of physical relief beneath her crus.h.i.+ng weight of trouble. How unutterably weary she was! How tired--how tired of life!